Celebrating 40 years of legal infanticide

Every year on January 22 pro-aborts celebrate the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Forty years ago the Supreme Court legalized abortion in the United States with a 7-to-2 majority vote in favor of Roe. Subsequently states were prohibited from deciding on the matter. And because of the High Court’s decision women now had a “fundamental right” to choose to abort a pre-born child. The Court’s decision has resulted in approximately 55,772,015 million abortions. That’s 1.394 million abortions each year! So every 12 minutes abortionists take no thought to expunging a child from her mother’s womb.

Today many Americans are naïve to the fact that partial-birth abortion or “intact dilation and extraction” was performed in the United States allegedly for “health reasons.” (Read more about PBA here) In 2003 President George W. Bush signed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act that made this barbaric practice illegal in most circumstances. The ban describes PBA as “a gruesome and inhumane procedure that is never medically necessary.”

Roe v. Wade

On a cold soggy January day in 1973 people gathered throughout America to celebrate women’s newfound freedom to abort their babies. No longer would the government have the right to intrude in “private family matters.” On that same day others mourned as they contemplated the Court’s shocking decision to legalize infanticide.

Not everyone on the High Court felt justice had been done in allowing abortion to become the law of the land. Justices Byron R. White and William H. Rehnquist wrote compelling dissenting opinions.

I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court’s judgment. The Court simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant women and, with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes. The upshot is that the people and the legislatures of the 50 States are constitutionally disentitled to weigh the relative importance of the continued existence and development of the fetus, on the one hand, against a spectrum of possible impacts on the woman, on the other hand. As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court perhaps has authority to do what it does today; but, in my view, its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the Constitution extends to this Court.

Rehnquist elaborated upon several of White’s points, by asserting that the Court’s historical analysis was flawed:

To reach its result, the Court necessarily has had to find within the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment a right that was apparently completely unknown to the drafters of the Amendment. As early as 1821, the first state law dealing directly with abortion was enacted by the Connecticut Legislature. By the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, there were at least 36 laws enacted by state or territorial legislatures limiting abortion. While many States have amended or updated their laws, 21 of the laws on the books in 1868 remain in effect today.

From this historical record, Rehnquist concluded that, “There apparently was no question concerning the validity of this provision or of any of the other state statutes when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted.” Therefore, in his view, “the drafters did not intend to have the Fourteenth Amendment withdraw from the States the power to legislate with respect to this matter.” (emphasis added)

So the burning question is: At what stage of development does life begin? Christian apologist Greg Koukl addresses this question thusly:

When does an acorn become an oak? Well, no one knows for sure…..Of course we do! An acorn never becomes an oak. An acorn is an oak. Period. That’s what an acorn is. It’s an oak in immature form. It can become a mature oak tree. But young or old, it’s an oak. This is not a matter of opinion, folks. When we get down to it, acorn doesn’t describe what a thing is, in a sense; it describes the stage of development of that particular thing. It’s kind of like asking what is a teenager? Well, a teenager isn’t a particular thing, like there is a being called teenager. What a teenager is is a description of the stage of development of the human being. It is a human at a certain age. An acorn is an oak at a certain age. And a fetus is a human being at a certain age.

Abortions impact on teens

Speaking of teens, believe it or not, the younger generation isless likely to support abortion. There are a couple of reasons for this shift. First, ultrasound equipment clearly shows an image of a developing person in the womb of its mother. Unlike many adults, teens are able to recognize a baby in its first stages of life. Consequently, more and more young people believe it is a terrible evil to kill a child in the womb simply because it’s imperfect or unwanted! Second, most kids grow up with their parent’s worldview and as adults they tend to share their parent’s values and beliefs. Do you see the irony? Pro-lifers bring more children into this world than pro-aborts do! This alone may explain the shift in young people’s views on abortion.

The impact of abortions on minorities

Most Americans are unaware of the impact abortion has had on the African American and Hispanic communities. According to National Right to Life (NRLC) African Americans make up 13% of the population but 30% of all abortions. Hispanics make up 17% of the population but 25% of all abortions.

Abortion mill Planned Parenthood (PP) targets minority women. What most people don’t realize is that 79% of PP abortion clinics are in minority neighborhoods! According to NRLC:

Examples of how the Latino community is targeted are plentiful, including an over-abundance of advertisements in mono-lingual Spanish papers that publish only in Latino communities; Planned Parenthood’s choice of a Mexican-American as its chaplain; and an all-out web campaign that targets Latina women.

As the abortion rate among non-Latin white women declines, the abortion industry realizes it needs to make up for that negative cash flow. Pretending to be a benevolent “family planning” organization is its hook into the Hispanic community.

One of Planned Parenthood’s Spanish language flyers claims that it is pro-woman, pro-family, pro-child, and pro-choice. For many Latinos, realizing that these are the blatant lies of an industry desperately in need of a new infusion of cash comes too late. (Source)

In Lies and Fraud of Roe v. Wade, David Kupelian wrote this about the late Judge Robert Bork:

Bork offers a disturbing insight into the radical feminist-inspired pro-abortion worldview behind Roe v. Wade. “No amount of discussion, no citation of evidence, can alter the opinions of radical feminists about abortion,” Bork states, illustrating his point with a story. “One evening I naively remarked in a talk that those who favor the right to abort would likely change their minds if they could be convinced that a human being was being killed. I was startled at the anger that statement provoked in several women present. One of them informed me in no uncertain terms that the issue had nothing to do with the humanity of the fetus but was entirely about the woman’s freedom.”

Judge Bork also made this comment:

I objected to Roe v. Wade the moment it was decided, not because of any doubts about abortion, but because the decision was a radical deformation of the Constitution. The Constitution has nothing to say about abortion, leaving it, like most subjects, to the judgment and moral sense of the American people and their elected representatives.

Liberals wholeheartedly support infanticide

In a piece entitled No limit on federally funded abortions if Obama’s re-elected I warned what would happen if Barack Obama got re-elected. It is no secret that abortion is a huge part of the Democratic platform. Most Democrats, including so-called Christian Democrats, support abortion on demand. The language of the 2012 Democratic Party platform states:

The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay.

I am the first to admit that the decision on whether or not to have an abortion is filled with emotion, anguish and in some cases guilt. What we must remember is that the mother has a constitutional right to abort the child in her womb for any reason, including sex-selection. But many of us seem to forget all about the child whose life is being snuffed out. It doesn’t even occur to us that pre-born human beings have a constitutional right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” We are, after all, talking about a person, not a mass of cells. Just as an acorn is in the infant stage of becoming a mighty oak tree, a fetus is in the early stage of becoming a full-grown human person. The size of the person should not matter; what matters is personhood! I pointed this out in Throwaway Human Beings:

…according to science, life begins at conception. So, pro-lifers must urge those who haven’t gotten the message yet to take a look at the scientific evidence. For example, ultrasound technology proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that a tiny human person is growing inside a mother’s womb. He/she is not developing into a person; he/she is already a person albeit an extremely small person, especially during the first-trimester. He/she is not a “blob of tissue” as many pro-aborts insist. Pro-aborts deliberately hide the fact that at10 weeks a fetus bends, stretches, opens and closes her hands, lifts her head, squints, swallows and wrinkles her forehead. More and more people now recognize that women who choose to have an abortion are signing a person’s death warrant!

What does God say about human life?

According to Genesis 1:27 a loving God fashioned human beings in His own image:

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

for I have created him for my glory, I have formed him; yea, I have made him.

What did the Lord Jesus say about human beings?

But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.Mat. 10:30, 31

What about the Apostle Paul?

But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.Ephesians 2:4-10

With all this in mind, when it comes to having an abortion the question a woman in a crisis pregnancy must ask herself is: If I choose the abortion option, am I taking a human life…a life that’s created in God’s image…a life that’s valuable to our Lord?

Marsha West is the Founder and Editor of Email Brigade News Report, an online news service for conservative people of faith. Marsha is a freelance writer whose main focus is on religious and cultural issues.

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